Original Sin

by P. D. James

  She said: ‘Where are we? What place is this?’

  He said, his voice carefully controlled: ‘Othona House. I’ve come to see Jean-Philippe Etienne.’

  They went together to the front door. He rang the bell. She could hear its peal even through the strong oak. The wait was not long. They could hear the rasp of the bolt, the turn of the key in the lock and the door opened. The stocky figure of an old woman dressed in black stood outlined against the light of the hall.

  She said: ‘Monsieur Etienne vous attend.’

  Gabriel turned to Frances. ‘I don’t think you’ve met Estelle, Jean-Philippe’s housekeeper. You’re all right now. In a few minutes you can telephone for help. Estelle will look after you in the meantime if you go with her.’

  She said: ‘I don’t need looking after. I’m not a child. You brought me here against my will. Now I’m here, I’m staying with you.’

  Estelle led them down a long stone-floored passage to the back of the house, then stood aside and motioned them to enter. The room, obviously a study, was dark-panelled, the air stagnant with the pungent sweetness of wood smoke. In the stone fireplace the flames leapt like tongues and the wood crackled and hissed. Jean-Philippe Etienne was seated in a high winged chair to the right of the fire. He didn’t get up. Standing against the window, facing the door, was Inspector Aaron. He was wearing a sheepskin jacket, its bulkiness emphasizing the stockiness of his figure. His face was very pale, but as a log of wood crashed and flared it glowed for a moment into ruddy life. His hair was windswept, dishevelled. He must, thought Frances, have arrived just before them and parked his car out of sight.

  Ignoring her, he said directly to Dauntsey, ‘I’ve been following you. I need to talk to you.’

  He took an envelope from his pocket and, drawing out a photograph, laid it on the table. He watched Dauntsey’s face in silence. No one moved.

  Dauntsey said: ‘I know what you’ve come to say, but the time for speaking is over. You are here not to talk but to listen.’

  And now for the first time Aaron seemed aware of Frances’s presence. He said sharply, almost accusingly: ‘Why are you here?’

  Frances’s mouth still ached but her voice was strong and clear. ‘Because I was brought here by force. I was bound and gagged. Gabriel has killed Claudia. He strangled her in the garage. I saw her body. Aren’t you going to arrest him? He’s killed Claudia and he killed the other two.’

  Etienne had got to his feet but now he gave a curious sound, something between a groan and a sigh, and sank back into his chair. Frances ran to him. She said: ‘I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, I should have told you more gently.’ Then, looking up, she saw Inspector Aaron’s horrified face.

  He turned to Dauntsey and said almost in a whisper: ‘So you did finish the job.’

  ‘Don’t blame yourself, Inspector. You couldn’t have saved her. She was dead before you left Innocent House.’

  He spoke directly to Jean-Philippe Etienne. ‘Stand up, Etienne. I want you to stand.’

  Etienne rose slowly from his chair and reached for his cane. With its help he got to his feet. He made an obvious effort to steady himself but swayed and might have fallen if Frances hadn’t moved forward and put her arms around his waist. He didn’t speak, but gazed at Dauntsey.

  Dauntsey said: ‘Stand behind your chair. You can use it for support.’

  ‘I don’t need support.’ Firmly he removed Frances’s arm. ‘It was only a temporary stiffness after sitting. I’m not standing behind the chair as if I were in the dock. And if you have come here as a judge, I thought it was usual to take the plea before the trial and to punish only if there is a verdict of guilty.’

  ‘There has been a trial. I’ve conducted the trial for over forty years. Now I’m asking you to admit that you handed over my wife and children to the Germans, that in fact you sent them to be murdered in Auschwitz.’

  ‘What were their names?’

  ‘Sophie Dauntsey, Martin and Ruth. They were going under the name Loiret. They had forged documents. You were one of the few people who knew that, who knew that they were Jews, who knew where they were living.’

  Etienne said calmly: ‘The names mean nothing. How can I be expected to remember? They weren’t the only Jews I informed on to Vichy and the Germans. How am I expected to remember the individual names or the families? I did what was necessary at the time. A great number of French lives depended on me. It was important that the Germans continued to trust me if I were to get my allocation of paper, ink and resources for the underground press. How can I be expected to remember one woman and two children after fifty years?’

  Dauntsey said: ‘I remember them.’

  ‘And now you have come for your revenge. Is it still sweet even after fifty years?’

  ‘This isn’t revenge, Etienne. This is justice.’

  ‘Oh don’t deceive yourself, Gabriel. This is revenge. Justice doesn’t require that you come finally to tell me what you have done. Gall it justice if it comforts your conscience. It’s a strong word, I hope you know what it means. I’m not sure that I do. Perhaps the representative of the law can help us.’

  Daniel said: ‘It means an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.’

  Dauntsey was still gazing at Jean-Philippe. ‘I have taken no more than you took, Etienne. A son and a daughter for a son and a daughter. You murdered my wife but yours was already dead when I learned the truth.’

  ‘Yes, she was beyond your malice. And mine.’

  He said the last two words so quietly that Frances wondered if she had really heard them.

  Gabriel went on: ‘You killed my children; I have killed yours. I have no posterity; you will have none. After Sophie’s death I could never love another woman. I don’t believe that our existence here has a meaning or that we have any future after death. Since there is no God there can be no divine justice. We have to make justice for ourselves and make it here on earth. It has taken me nearly fifty years but I have made my justice.’

  ‘It would have been more effective if you had acted sooner. My son had his youth, his young manhood. He had success, the love of women. You couldn’t take those away from him. Your children had none of them. Justice should be speedy as well as effective. Justice doesn’t wait for fifty years.’

  ‘What has time to do with justice? Time takes away our strength, our talent, our memories, our joys, even our capacity to grieve. Why should we let it take away the imperative of justice? I had to be certain, and that, too, was justice. It took me over twenty years to trace two vital witnesses. Even then I was in no hurry. I couldn’t have stood ten years or more of prison and now I shan’t have to. Nothing is impossible to bear at seventy-six. Then your son got engaged. There might have been a child. Justice required that only two should die.’

  Etienne said: ‘And is that why you left your publishers and came to Peverell Press in 1962? Did you suspect me then?’

  ‘I was beginning to. The strands of my inquiry were beginning to come together. It seemed sensible to get close to you. And you were, I remember, glad enough to have me and my money.’

  ‘Of course. Henry Peverell and I thought that we were getting a major talent. You should have kept your energies for your poetry, Gabriel, not wasted them on a useless obsession born of your own guilt. It was hardly your fault that your wife and children were trapped in France. You were imprudent in leaving them at that time, of course, but no more. You left them and they died. Why try to purge that guilt by murdering the innocent? But murdering the innocent is your forte, isn’t it? You took part in the bombing of Dresden. Nothing I have done can compete with the horror and magnitude of that achievement.’

  Daniel said, almost in a whisper: ‘That was different. That was the awful necessity of war.’

  Etienne turned on him: ‘And so it was for me, the necessity of war.’ He paused, and when he spoke again Frances could hear in his voice the barely controlled note of triumph. ‘If you want to act like God, Gabriel, you should first e
nsure that you have the wisdom and knowledge of God. I have never had a child. I caught a viral infection when I was thirteen; I am totally infertile. My wife needed a son and a daughter and to satisfy her maternal obsession I agreed to provide them. Gerard and Claudia were adopted in Canada and brought back with us to England. They are not related by blood either to each other or to me. I promised my wife that the truth would never be publicly known but Gerard and Claudia were both told when they were fourteen. The effect on Gerard was unfortunate. Both children should have been told from the start.’

  Frances knew that Gabriel didn’t need to ask if this was the truth. She had to force herself to look at him. For a moment she saw him physically crumble, the muscles of face and body seeming to disintegrate even as she watched. He had been an old man but one with force, intelligence and will. Now everything that was alive in him drained away in front of her eyes. Quickly she moved towards him but he put out a restraining hand. Now, slowly and painfully, he forced himself to stand upright. He tried to speak but no words came. Then he turned and made for the door. No one spoke, but they followed him out through the hall and into the night and watched while he walked towards the narrow ridge of rock at the edge of the marsh.

  Frances ran after him and, catching him up, seized him by his jacket. He tried to shake her off but she clung on and his strength was failing. It was Daniel, running up behind them, who clasped her in his arms and carried her bodily away. She tried to struggle free but his arms were like iron bands. She watched helplessly as Gabriel walked forward into the marsh.

  Daniel said: ‘Let him be. Let him be.’

  She called back to Jean-Philippe Etienne: ‘Go after him! Stop him! Make him come back!’

  Daniel said quietly, ‘Come back for what?’

  ‘But he’ll never reach the sea.’

  It was Etienne coming up beside them who spoke. ‘He doesn’t need to reach it. Those pools are deep. A man can drown in a foot of water if he wants to die.’

  They stood watching. Frances was still held in Daniel’s arms. Suddenly she was aware of the beating of his heart thudding against her own. The stumbling figure was dark against the night sky. It rose, then fell, then reared itself up and fought on. Again the clouds moved and by the light of the moon they could see him more clearly. From time to time he would fall, but then would rise to his feet again, looking immense as a giant, arms raised as if in a curse or a last beseeching gesture. Frances knew that he was fighting to reach the sea, longing to walk out into its cold immensity, further and deeper, until he could splash forward into that final blessed oblivion.

  And now he was down again, and this time he didn’t rise. Frances thought she could see the glitter of the moonlight on the surface of the pool. It seemed to her that almost all his body was submerged. But she could no longer see him clearly. He was just one more dark low hump amongst all the tussocks of this sodden wasteland. They waited in silence, but there was no movement. He had become part of the marshland and of the night. Now Daniel released her and she moved and stood a little apart. The silence was absolute. And at last she thought she could hear the sea, a faint susurration, less a sound than a pulse beat on the quiet air.

  They were turning towards the house when the night vibrated with a harsh metallic groan which grew rapidly into a rattle. Overhead were the twin lights of a helicopter. They watched as it circled three times then landed on the field beside Othona House. Frances thought, so they have found Claudia’s body. James must have got tired of waiting for her and in the end gone back to Innocent House to search.

  She stood on the edge of the field, still a little apart from the others, and saw the three figures running crouched under the great blades, then standing upright and moving towards her, over the gritty field and the wind-torn grass, Commander Dalgliesh, Inspector Miskin and James. Etienne moved forward to meet them. They stood in a group talking together. She thought, let Etienne tell them. I shall wait.

  Then Dalgliesh detached himself and came up to her. He didn’t touch her but he bent from his tall height and looked intently into her face.

  ‘Are you all right?’

  ‘I am now.’

  He smiled and said: ‘We’ll talk very soon. De Witt insisted on coming with us. It was less trouble to let him have his way.’

  He walked on to join Etienne and Kate and together they went towards Othona House.

  Frances thought, ‘I am myself at last. I have something worth giving him.’ She didn’t run towards the waiting figure. She didn’t call out to him. It was slowly, but with all the intensity of her being, that she walked over the windswept grass and into his waiting arms.

  Daniel heard the approach of the helicopter but he didn’t move. He stood on the narrow ridge of rock still looking out over the saltings to the sea. He waited in solitary patience until he heard the approaching footsteps and Dalgliesh was at his side.

  He said: ‘Was he under arrest?’

  ‘No, sir. I didn’t come to arrest him, I came to warn him. I didn’t caution him. I did speak but they weren’t the words you would have spoken. I let him go.’

  ‘You let him go deliberately? He didn’t break free?’

  ‘No, sir. He didn’t break free.’ He added, so softly that he doubted whether Dalgliesh heard the words: ‘But he’s free now.’

  Dalgliesh turned away and went back to the house. He had learned what he needed to know. No one else came near. Daniel felt isolated in a moral quarantine, standing on the edge of the marshes, on the edge of the world. He thought he saw a trembling light, bright as phosphorus, burning and darting among the humps of marram grass and the black pools of stagnant water. He couldn’t see the small breaking waves but he could hear the sea, a soft eternal moaning like a universal grief. And then the clouds moved and the moon with its shaved side, so nearly full, shed its cold light on the marsh and on that distant fallen figure. He sensed a shadow at his side. Turning he saw that it was Kate. It was with astonishment and pity that he realized her face was wet with tears.

  He said: ‘I wasn’t trying to help him escape. I knew that there could be no escape. But I couldn’t bear to see him handcuffed, in the dock, in prison. I wanted to give him the chance to take his own path home.’

  She said: ‘Daniel, you fool. You bloody fool.’

  He turned to her and said: ‘What will he do?’

  ‘AD? What do you think he’ll do? Oh God, Daniel, you could have been so good, you were so good.’

  He said: ‘Etienne couldn’t even remember their names. He could hardly remember what he’d done. He felt no guilt, no remorse. A mother and two small children. They didn’t exist. They weren’t human. He would have given more thought to putting down a dog. He didn’t think of them as people. They were expendable. They didn’t count. They were Jews.’

  She cried: ‘And Esmé Carling? Old, plain, childless, alone. Not a very good writer. Was she expendable? All right, she didn’t have a lot. A flat, someone else’s kid to spend the evenings with, a few photographs, her books. What right had he to decide that her life didn’t count?’

  He said bitterly: ‘You’re so confident, aren’t you, Kate. So certain you know what’s right. It must be comforting, never having to face a moral dilemma. The criminal law and police regulations: they provide all you need, don’t they?’

  She said: ‘I’m certain about some things. I’m certain about murder. How could I be a police officer if I weren’t?’

  Dalgliesh came over to them. He said in a voice as ordinary as if they were companionably together in that Wapping incident room: ‘The Essex Police won’t attempt to recover the body until daylight. I want you to drive Kate back to London. Do you feel able to do that?’

  ‘Yes, sir. I’m perfectly fit to drive.’

  ‘If you aren’t, Kate will take over. Mr de Witt and Miss Peverell will come with me in the helicopter. They’ll want to get back as soon as possible. I’ll see you both later tonight at Wapping.’

  Daniel stood with Kate at his
side until the three figures had joined the pilot and entered the helicopter. The machine roared into life and the great blades slowly revolved, spun into a haze, became invisible. The helicopter lifted and lurched into the sky. Etienne and Estelle were on the edge of the field looking up at it. He thought bitterly: they look like sightseers. It’s a wonder they’re not waving goodbye.

  He said to Kate: ‘There’s something I’ve left in the house.’

  The front door stood open. She came with him through the hall and into the study, walking behind him so that he shouldn’t feel like a prisoner under escort. The light had been turned off in the room but the flames of the fire threw dancing gules over the walls and ceilings and stained the polished surface of the table with a ruddy glow, as if it had been smeared with blood.

  The photograph was still there. He was for a moment surprised that Dalgliesh hadn’t taken it. But then he remembered. It didn’t matter. There would be no trial now, no exhibits, no need to produce it as evidence in court. It wasn’t needed any more. It was of no importance.

  He left it on the table and, turning to join Kate, walked with her in silence to the car.

  Author biography

  P. D. James was born in Oxford in 1920 and educated at Cambridge High School for Girls. From 1949 to 1968 she worked in the National Health Service and subsequently in the Home Office, first in the Police Department and later in the Criminal Policy Department. All that experience has been used in her novels. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and of the Royal Society of Arts and has served as a Governor of the BBC, a member of the Arts Council, where she was Chairman of the Literary Advisory Panel, on the Board of the British Council and as a magistrate in Middlesex and London. She has won awards for crime writing in Britain, America, Italy and Scandinavia, including the Mystery Writers of America Grandmaster Award and the National Arts Club Medal of Honor for Literature (US). She has received honorary degrees from seven British universities, was awarded an OBE in 1983 and was created a life peer in 1991. In 1997 she was elected President of the Society of Authors.